I was thinking, idly, that perhaps this V1 had been tipped off balance by a skilled pilot and maybe went into a flat spin? If gentle enough, and if the vegetation canopy was dense enough, it might have simply flown into the trees without too much issue?

Of course all of this is working on the assumption that it was a V1. My Grandmother only ever called it a Doodlebug, and commented on how big the thing was. She assumed it would be quite small but it was ‘much bigger than the car’. It could have maybe just been a conventional Luftwaffe aircraft with bombs on board?

Thanks John Green for confirming that underground stations were kept on as accommodation after the war.

The Gladiator ‘Faith’ is still in Valletta, in the war museum in Fort St. Elmo. I find lots of references online to many people wanting it moved to the air museum, but nothing has happened. It is displayed, minus the wings.

There is a lot of material there. The small footprint of the museum is misleading, and I would give yourself a good morning or so to get around the whole thing.

This is the Gladiator project:

Apparently there was some Stuka material mixed in with the Gladiator parts here.

This tidy example of a Link Trainer was also a nice surprise:

As was this Meteor canopy hiding in among other parts outside:

The key is to look up, look down, look under and look behind things! For example I was impressed with how a Meteor (possibly a T7?) had been taken apart and effectively hidden in the same hangar as a Huey and partial DC3 section. I had overlooked these parts until the man on the front desk pointed them out. You can just see the engines, sitting vertically in this shot:

Whereas the cockpit was here:

On our last day on Malta we were treated to a couple of passes from the museum’s Tiger Moth, which operates from a section of restored runway at the racecourse adjacent to the museum. During our stay on Malta we saw several military movements, including traffic for a small airshow they were holding over the weekend of the 23rd and 24th. I spotted a couple of Hercs, a couple of A400Ms as well as the Swiss Pilatus display team and the ‘Turkish Stars’ display team, who thundered up the Gozo/Comino channel with smoke on, in groups of twos and threes. Civil movements in and out of Luqa are easily spotted from all over the island as well. I also saw several Antonov 12s rumbling out of Luqa, which I don’t generally get to see in Edinburgh.